Who We Were
by CLMScagliotti
Summary: Nobody ever thought it would come so far. They'd always been so cautious. But for once, they all trusted the traitor. Three years. In the first year she appeared, in the second year everything disappeared. And in the third, they barely even remembered who they were before. New names. New homes. New lives. But it's not easy to let go of what you love. Or who.
1. Udinov, Alexandra

A/N: KNOCK KNOCK. Alright, so for this story I kinda borrowed other shows' input. It's not actually a crossover though. All I borrowed from Gemini Division (in which Allison was scagliawesome a few years ago) is the name Gemini Division for an organization I made up myself. And all I borrowed from Nikita is the name Alexandra Udinov and the idea for her face claim, Lyndsy Fonseca.

I hope you like the idea and how I worked with it. It's definitely something else than my usual.

KTF CLM

30.03.2017, [Flashbacks 2016]

Alexandra Udinov: Operation Infiltration

I finally reached my goal. I finally succeeded. Three years ago, I started a play that would definitely be worth all the famous film prizes in the world. I ran away from my rich parents' house and I worked my way through hell.

First I went to live on the streets. I spent nearly a whole year out there, freezing in the cold of the winter months. Running in the unbearable heat of the summer months. I hid from the raindrops and the thunder above my head and I let the sun dry me off later while I was already planning my next move again.

It wasn't an easy task, but they told me I'd fight for a good thing. For justice. For freedom. It almost felt as if they were sending me into the center of a war. And of course it was an amazing opportunity and a great honor to be chosen for a task like this. I didn't even knew why they'd pick me of all people they could have recruited for this special mission.

But I wouldn't question it. For me, this was a gift. And I'm the last person on earth who you'd hear complaining about being given a chance to take revenge.

After I made my time on streets they made sure that the right people would find me. I told them the craziest things that I could imagine. I said I could talk to the ghosts of my dead parents. Neither of them knew that my parents were still alive and were probably wondering where I'd gone to. I don't think they were too worried though. They never are.

But the insane tales I told them had the wanted consequences: They locked me up in the loony bin.

One or two of you might ask: Why would anyone do this? Voluntarily living on the streets and getting oneself locked up in a mental institution? The answer is easier than you might think.

I wanted them to find me. And luckily for me, they did. After two years of hard work in a web of lies instead of the luxury I'd been used to once upon a time I met her.

She was a young woman, exactly like she'd been described to me. Her hair was colored auburn red. She seemed to have sympathy for me from the very start. She even said the lines they gave me in the script.

"Hello. My name is Claudia Donovan. I'm working for the government and I have an offer to make you, dear Alexandra."

"It's Alex. And what do you mean, an offer? I'm locked in here for a reason. Why would the government want to have anything to do with a crazy girl like me?"

"They say you're crazy, Alex. I say you're special. You're already part of the world I want to invite you to. A world of endless wonder."

From then on it all happened in a rush. Somehow those people, I'm not even sure if the ones I worked for or the ones I pretended to work for, got me out of the institution and into a pretty Bed&Breakfast in the middle of nowhere, South Dakota.

Donovan didn't know that I knew exactly where we were going. But I still didn't know what I had gotten myself into. The old gigantic Warehouse itself was a miracle for itself. But that wasn't why I had been sent here.

This was about the people who I sat at the breakfast table with every morning for the past year.

I wasn't usually a person to wake up sooner than I had to, but I knew that I'd have to change that lazy habit of mine for this mission.

So I was always the first one down in the kitchen. I told them that I tried to be useful. That I felt bad because of all the things they did for me that I could never thank them enough for. It was only my luck that none of them had any idea how much and what exactly they were actually doing for me.

It wasn't that much of a task to stand up before Lattimer did. And Nielson and Donovan usually didn't even come back to Leena's at night. Artie stayed at the Warehouse and only Claudia knew where Claudia was meanwhile. She could have meetings on the moon for all we knew.

It however wasn't too easy to wake up before Bering and Jinks did. On first glance I would have thought that Myka would be the first one up. So I was pretty much focused on when she would first leave her room in the morning. Five o'clock, showering and then coffee. So in the first week I started my experiment, I made myself wake up at four thirty. I finished showering before she even woke up and while she was in the bathroom I got dressed and went downstairs to make us coffee.

I didn't expect the man sitting on the porch and meditating at five thirty am. It messed my original plans to start with Myka up a bit.

But Steven Jinks seemed to have the nasty habit to ruin the most important parts of my plan. At first I still hoped that the agents of Gemini had made a bad joke when they told me that I couldn't lie to him. Something like: Let's play games with the new kid. But after a few little tests [a fake birthday, a made up story about my parents...] it quickly became clear that this hadn't just been some stupid joke. He was really the human lie detector. That made my mission a lot more difficult than I'd like to have it.

I couldn't give him honest answers, so the only solution was to make him stop asking the wrong questions. And to do that I needed him to trust me.

I still remember our first morning conversation like it was just yesterday. I had to quickly change my plans so I decided to improvise. I simply stepped out on the porch, knocking on the open door to make my presence known.

"Agent Jinks?"

"Morning Alexandra." He'd turned around and smiled at me.

"Alex." I quietly corrected him. "So... what are you doing out here so early?"

"I'm meditating."

I laughed and nodded, ignoring the fact that I'd already known that. "I can imagine you need that around here from time to time. Is this like a religious thing for you?"

He nodded, smirking a little bit at my first comment. "I'm a Buddhist."

And that was all I needed to get into a forty eight minutes lasting conversation about religion, peace and war and, most importantly of course, the job he already did here at the Warehouse. He was quite an impressive agent, but there was a certain name that seemed to be on replay in the young man's head. And that was no other than Claudia Donovan. He called her Claude, Laverne, partner, Caretaker, best friend and so much more. But the smile on his face gave away that he was talking about the fiery seemingly ageless redhead I'd met first of all of them.

The people at Gemini had told me that Steve was gay, but from the way he talked about her and the way he looked at her I seriously started to doubt that. But it made me curious. So in the middle of the conversation I decided it would be innocent enough to throw the question in.

"Do you like, have a crush on Claudia or something?"

"What? Uh, no. Actually I'm gay."

I just nodded, but the way he said that didn't quite convince me. He may be gay, but it seemed to me that this couldn't stop him from falling head over heels for the woman who made her way from the tech savvy kid to the leader of the pack in within six or seven years. I decided to do some more research on that point when I'd get a chance to talk to Claudia.

But after my talk with Jinks, my next on the list was still Myka Bering. When I heard her coming down the stairs I excused myself and went into the kitchen where I quickly reheated our coffee and held out one cup to the brunette agent.

She smiled. It was almost a miracle that she didn't look at least a little bit tired at six twenty am in the morning. But maybe she was just one of those people.

"Morning Alex. How are you today? I didn't expect you to be up already. If I'd known..."

"It's okay Myka. I was outside talking to Steve. Oh, and thanks for remembering." I was referring to my name and she knew that. From the first day she was the first one to remember that I didn't want to be called Alexandra. I liked her. It was a pity that she'd have to go down with the others.

"It's no problem. I wouldn't want Pete to run around in the neighborhood and call me Myka Ophelia either."

"What? Univille already counts as a neighborhood?"

At that comment we both couldn't help laughing anymore. And somehow that carried the conversation into new dimensions. From geographical norms we went to countries she'd already been to, the artifacts she and Pete snagged along the way, which ones her personal favorites were and which ones scared her the most. She seemed to have a specific hatred against tentacles and a special love for the written word.

She talked about her parents' bookstore in Colorado Springs, the infamous seemingly still living WOMAN HG Wells [She totally caught me with that one.] and in the end about the two or three books her boyfriend said he'd read, but never did. Her favorite parade example seemed to be the Warehouse manual. I'd already read the most important parts back at Gemini. But they didn't have to know that.

However at the mention of his name Lattimer stuck his head through the door, the sleep still clearly visible in his tired eyes.

"Hey! Do you have any idea how many pages that thing has? It's inhuman!"

Myka rolled her eyes, but before she could say anything I had already chosen him as my next small talk partner.

"Of course it's not human, Pete. It's a book."

He needed a few seconds to understand what I just said, then he grinned. Well, he grinned. If he understood it? No idea.

"You know, if you want something good to read just come to me. Maybe I'll let you borrow a few of my comic books."

Myka rolled her eyes with annoyance [again]…

"Pete, I keep telling you: you can call it a book as often as you want to, but that doesn't make it true."

For the upcoming hour I was the witness of a discussion about some weird fight between the classical simple heroes in real books and the supernatural and powerful super heroes from Marvel and DC. I don't even remember who won. And I don't think they do either. They just seemed to enjoy the discussion with each other.

At some point of the conversation we'd moved from the kitchen to the living room. They sat next to each other at the opposite wide of the table. I sat in the middle of two empty chairs. Hopefully I'd catch a few glances if I sat between Jinks and Donovan.

Within five minutes Steven had already taken the seat to my left. We chatted a little bit, drinking coffee and tea [or at least tea is my best guess for this meditation drink in his cup] and waiting for the heated discussion across the table to calm down.

Ten minutes later Claudia appeared out of nowhere [I think Pete said she's Mrs Frederic-ing us. Whatever that means.] and sat down to my right.

We ate, we talked, I caught the stolen glances from my left to my right and from my right to my left, the agents across the table laughed together and leant towards each other, all about the earlier disagreement was long forgotten. And at some point Artie would interrupt our meal and sent Pete and Myka to snag, bag and tag something somewhere; Claudia went off to her meeting with the Regents or wherever she was all day; and Steve and I followed Artie back to the Warehouse.

Artie was training Jinks to become the new Special Agent In Charge. So they walked around the Warehouse, studying the Escher Vault, The Dark Vault, The Bronze Sector, The Gooery [I heard that's a patent of Claudia Donovan herself.], The Feng Shui Spiral or another one of this special corners of the giant Warehouse while I was usually stuck with inventory duty. Sometimes I was aloud to accompany the one or other agent, when there was a second case and Claudia couldn't come and Artie was needed at the Warehouse [or just too old. Not that I'd say that out loud. Only Claudia was aloud to do that. At the beginning I still thought it was because she's the boss now. But Myka said she'd always done that.] they'd send me and Steve.

That was my daily routine for about one year. That's when Gemini set their plan in motion. They pretended to kidnap me, to torture me to give them information. Nobody knew that I gave it to them willingly. That this had been the deal when I came here. The agents all expected Gemini to break into the Warehouse. But that was never what we wanted. We crashed the whole organization. Gemini anonymously posted parts and pictures [taken by no other person but myself over the past year] online. Of course that set off fights. The fights grew into a war. At some point the Regents hid the artifacts. I couldn't explain how or where.

The Warehouse organization found it's end. The artifacts were hidden at an unknown place. And the agents and Regents? Some of them were probably dead. And the others were still hiding from the law.

Sadly, so was I.

My name is Alex Udinov, and I think I may just have made the worst decision in the history of humanity.


	2. Donovan, Claudia

A/N: KNOCK KNOCK. Alright. This chapter has a lot of references, even though you could barely call it a crossover. First of all there's Claudia's cover name, which is a mix from Allison's roles as Leah Ratliff on Chastity Bites and as Mindy Crenshaw on Drake & Josh. D&J is a Nickelodeon show and Mindy was the first role I ever saw Scags in. CB is an awesome movie where Scags rocked the lead role with sarcasm, smartass comments and badass moves in the fight against the evil Bloodcountess Elizabeth Bathory. If you haven't checked it out yet, you really should.

What else is new? Claude's friends in this chapter. Kat Raisa is based on the actress Francia Raisa, who played Kath Garcia in Chastity Bites. She's yet another reason why I love this movie so much. But I should probably cut the promotion short here. This isn't what you want to hear. Suraya is based off one of my twitter RP characters. Her FC is Meaghan Rath, and her brother's is, rationally, Jesse Rath. I really like both of them and as far as I know so does Scags.

And last of all I mentioned two characters, Nell and Kensi, from NCIS: LA again. Nelly is already Claude's cousin in one of my other stories, The Children Of The Warehouse, which I updated today too.

That should be it for now. I hope you like it.

((PS: The next chapter (Jinks, Steven) is almost done. I don't know when I'll get to upload it though. Jinksy and Claude will probably be my main characters.))

KTF CLM

11.11.2018

Claudia Donovan || Leah Crenshaw

California was a beautiful place to be. From the large window in my living room I could see the ocean. Peaceful, yet so in motion. The waves were low and soft today. But it was November. The blue water would be cold. So I didn't go swimming. Not since I arrived here. For my physical health. I didn't want to catch a cold. That's why I'm always inside. At least that's what I tell myself. But considered that it was April when I came here and I already spent two summers here, that was a lousy excuse.

Yes. I was already here since April 2017. And still none of my neighbors even knew my name. They didn't know where I was from. They had no idea who I was. By now, I'm not even sure who I am myself.

All I know is who I once was and who I pretended to be.

Back in 2016, I was Special Agent Claudia Donovan. I was the smartass hacker with a Tesla gun. I was the weapons expert in both, the virtual as well as the real world. They called me Mr. Knock Knock. Or they called me the Goo Queen. They called me the Caretaker. Names none of my neighbors would ever understand.

Because my neighbors only knew the young woman I pretended to be. Officially, my name is Leah.

Leah Crenshaw. I was born on the 30th of November 1991. I was born and raised in San Diego, California. I went to college in Harvard, Massachusetts from 2009 till 2013. That's where I studied. Law. I got my Juris Doctor after three years. After that I spent one more year there to get my Master of Laws.

I always wanted to become a lawyer. Just like my father. So I'm working at the court here in California now.

Only that my father wasn't Peter Crenshaw, the successful lawyer. No, my real father was John Donovan, a man with more mysteries and secrets than the infamous legendary Warehouse 13 stored artifacts. Well, maybe not as much. Even though I probably know this building better than I knew my own father.

Also, my mother wasn't Miriam Crenshaw, born Brown, the nice but strict full-time mother behind the white picket fence. My actual mother was Catharine Donovan, born Ratliff, the secretive woman with two lives. One as a nurse at the hospital and one at her husband's workplace.

I was 23 years old when I found out who they really were. I knew Catharine and John. But I didn't know what they actually worked. I didn't know that they were young Warehouse agents who took a step back out of the dangerous business after they fell in love. Then another step backwards when they got married in their mid to late twenties. And shortly after that another step back when my brother Joshua was born.

We grew up like normal children. Three years after Josh was born they had Claire. Eight years after Claire they had me. We had a nice life. A beautiful house, a tight knit family, and Claire and Josh were quite popular at school.

It was in the year of 1995 when our lives really started to get affected by our parents' former lives. Josh was fourteen. He had good grades in school and his worst worry was his annoying on-off relationship with one of those cheerleader chicks. Today none of us even remembers the stupid girl's name. I think it could have possibly been something like a... Holly? Hayley? Kayley? Kacey? Maybe. Or something completely different. But that doesn't matter anymore.

Claire was eleven back then. She was incredibly smart, but she preferred to keep her true intelligence close to her chest. She had a reputation there after all. That however, luckily, wasn't the most important thing for her. Not as soon as she spotted a dance floor or even just heard something comparable to a danceable song. And she was good. Music was her passion. Her entire life had to consist of music. From harmonical melodies to the loud noise of drums echoing through the halls of our house. It was her way to relax as well as to challenge herself. And Claire Donovan never said no to a good challenge.

But all of the sudden they had greater problems than school or friends. Our parents changed. They often forgot things and they constantly seemed to be afraid of something. My older siblings pretty much dropped their entire social life to take care of me and to support mom and dad. It took them years to recover from whatever exactly happened back then, and when Claire and Josh finally had time for their friends again those had already forgotten they existed at all. Joshua focused on school and Claire learned to live with a smaller circle of friends.

I couldn't have been older than three years when it happened. I barely remember anything from this oh-so peaceful time. Most of the things that I just told you, are things that Joshua and Claire told me.

But even they didn't know the reason for the sudden change in 1995. They couldn't have known the truth. I still can't completely understand and believe it myself today. The story came to me in bits and pieces, like a shattered mirror. With every little piece the image of the woman I could have been today became clearer and clearer.

At first all they told me was that my parents stumbled across another artifact. When I started asking questions [What? When? Where? How? Didn't they smell the fudge? Couldn't they save themselves? What happened at all? You make it sound like they died. But they didn't. I've gotta know it. Why are you telling me this now? Why not earlier? The usual standard questions I always had when I found out that yet another part of my past had been nothing but a good covered lie.] they, as always, closed up. No more questions, not a single useful answer.

Nearly a year later, I at least got a little bit information out of those ignoramuses. They wouldn't give me a name or a concrete object or artifact, probably because they were afraid that I'd look it up and try to save yet another part of my broken family. Mom and Dad didn't die in 1995, only a part of their brains did. A part that through a 'pure conciseness', held a lot of very important memories about a specific Warehouse in the goddamn Badlands of South Dakota.

Apparently they'd both known too much. Of course the Regents never thought that exactly this knowledge would have saved John and Catharine later in 1999. Wouldn't the Regents have stolen this important information right out of their minds, my parents would have known what to do. They would have neutralized Frances Farmer's music box before Claire even had the chance to throw it into the fireplace. They could have taken Georg Joachim Rheticus' compass from Joshua before he even had the chance to try out this dangerous theory on himself. Claire wouldn't have fallen into her fifteen years lasting coma, Joshua wouldn't have disappeared for nine years because of the backfired experiment and Mom and Dad would probably still be alive today.

I was still grieving over the lost childhood of the girl I never got the chance to be. And now? Now I'm pretending. Acting as if nothing of this ever happened. As if I had the seemingly most perfect life all along. If only they knew...

I thought back to the people who once were my team. No, they were more than that. They were my family.

Artie was like our father. Over such a long time he'd been there for me as much as he could. He'd always tried to make up for the mistakes he made in the past.

Pete was like another big brother for me. He wasn't like Joshua at all. But he joked around with me. He came up with the weekly movie night in his room. That was one of the few traditions we were able to keep alive after I became the Caretaker.

Myka was another older sister to me. There were also a lot of differences between Myka and Claire. But Mykes and I became really good friends over reading sessions and as survivors of the war that seemed to have stolen all intelligence from around there.

Than there was our 'new' girl, Alex. Through our similar backgrounds I connected to her pretty easily. At first I was afraid this could be another situation like the one with Nick a few years ago. But Artie as well as the Regents seemed to approve of this one. For once I got to play big sister. I helped her through emotional times, I trained her for her future at the Warehouse and I had the 1 on her speed dial. I once told her that the 5 would be easier to reach, but she said that I was her idol, her number 1. She answered that her finger automatically first wandered to the 1 because she knew that this was mine.

Abigail Cho hab been our innkeeper for two years before she switched to being a full-time Regent. Well, halftime Regent and halftime history professor at SDU. She came to visit about once a month at the beginning. But at some point her visits stopped. I don't really know what happened to her. Of course I was worried about her. She's still my friend after all. But my main concern was already busy somewhere else.

Special Agent Steven Jinks. I remember that day in 2011 as if it was yesterday. Within a single week he turned from a stranger, the ATF agent and human lie detector, into a co-worker. A fellow agent, and eventually my partner. But Steve was so much more than just my partner. He was my best friend. My BFFEWYLION. My Jinksy. My Shirley. The one person who I trusted more than anyone else. It felt like he made me a better person through simply standing next to me. When I think about him, which I always did more than I cared to admit, I thought that he pretty much matched the description my mother gave me when I asked her what a soulmate was. I was only a child, but I could still hear those words in the back of my mind. It's like she was talking to me. Like she told me that I found mine and that I should never let him go.

But the situation wasn't so easy. Yes, I might have something like a crush on him. Probably more than that. But he could never know that. I couldn't tell him. He was gay. This would have ruined our entire friendship, everything we've been working on for all those years together. And now it didn't matter anymore. Now my chances all passed by anyway. Thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that it was probably better this way.

But enough of my daydreams. I walked down the stairs and out of my apartment complex. I got into the not-so-young Prius, I could never convince myself to let go of it so I just changed the license plates, and started the engine.

I would be meeting a few friends at a nearby cafe. Yes, I somehow managed to find friends here. Well, Leah did. First I met Kat Raisa. She was working at the court with me. She was quite a peaceful and slightly shy person, even a year younger than me. Not exactly the kind of woman you'd pick as a lawyer. That was till you accidentally got into a basically ridiculous discussion with her. The girl had a certain fire about her as soon as she felt she was pulled into a fight. She sure knew how to defend her point and her opinion. She was almost like a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide kind of person, just that she knew exactly what she was doing.

The story of how I became friends with the now twenty-two year old woman Suraya Everett was almost a little bit of a cliche. I used to date one of her older brothers who I'd met while performing a song at something like an open mic here in California. Zakir 'Zack' Everett was a hell of a good drummer, but also a literal hell of a boyfriend. He was two years older than me and had a major crush on his mirror. Our relationship was somehow kept alive over seven months. How? I have no idea. But when he moved to New York last year and we broke up I was almost glad that it was over. Now I don't even remerber why and how this all started. Maybe I thought he could help me to forget my old life. Or maybe I was just trying to forget a particular person from my old life. I was incredibly stupid to believe this was a good idea. But at least this made the break-up a lot easier.

I kept in contact with Raya and since then we had jam sessions once a week. She played the bass like she never did anything else. Well, according to her brother she never did. She was studying music here in California. Back at high school she'd been in a band. She was still friends with all of her band mates. Sometimes she brought their lead singer and her college roommate Kyra when we were jamming together. The band's lead guitarist Zander was Raya's boyfriend today. They'd celebrate their four year anniversary sometime this month. At least one of us seemed to have fallen for her Mr Right. Even though I'm a littile bit worried about how much those two really depended on each other. But I couldn't tell Ray about my doubts. She'd only ask why I couldn't just have faith in love. And I couldn't give her an honest answer to that question.

To my luck, one of my cousins, Nell Jones, was an agent at the Navy CIS office here in California. So at least I was aloud to see one part of my remaining family once or twice a month. She'd told her colleagues that I was in something like the witnesses protection program. Considered the bad experience I already had with that organization, I could only nod. Sometimes she'd bring her best friend Kensi when we were meeting somewhere.

So all in all, I had Kat, Raya, Kyra, Nell and Kensi by now. And that was already more than I ever planned to get. Of course I was grateful for it, but it hurt me to lie to them. And three of them were completely oblivious to who I once was.

Of course I could find my old friends. And of course I wanted to. But I knew that we'd been placed so far apart from each other for a reason. The risk was too high. So for now, all I could do was smiling and lying.


End file.
